Opinion Pieces and Book Reviews

Here are some of my shorter writings, organized topically. You can find a full list on my CV.

First Amendment

• “SCOTUS Gets it Right on Religious Liberty,” Christianity Today (November 26, 2020)

• “Close the Churches,” The Atlantic (March 18, 2020)

• “America’s Most Under-Appreciated Right,” The Atlantic (December 25, 2019)

• “Rehabilitating Freedom of Assembly,” USA Today (January 10, 2016)

• “Want a Vibrant Public Square?  Support Religious Tax Exemptions,” Washington Post (September 16, 2015)

• “The Right of Assembly Violently Wrested,” Hedgehog Review Blog (September 11, 2014)

• “Contraception Fight Not Just a ‘Catholic Thing,'” USA Today (August 20, 2012)

Pluralism

• “The Virus Without a Vaccine,” Hedgehog Review Blog (December 3, 2020)

• “Amy Coney Barrett, Handmaids, and Empathy for the Unfamiliar,” Newsweek (September 23, 2020)

• “Democrats Are Going to Regret Beto’s Stance on Conservative Churches,” The Atlantic (October 12, 2019)

• “Searching for Safe Spaces,” Inside Higher Ed (with Ashutosh Bhagwat) (March 21, 2017)

• “How to United in Spite of Trump,” USA Today (December 22, 2016)

• “We Disagree on the ‘Self-Evident Truths’ in the Declaration of Independence. But We Always Did,” Washington Post (July 5, 2016)

Race

• “Do Black Lives Matter to Evangelicals?” Washington Post (January 6, 2016)

• “The Japanese-American Internment Decision: A Dangerous Relic,” Los Angeles Times (with Karen Tani) (December 18, 2015)

• “Are We Ferguson?” CNN (August 21, 2014)

• “Let’s Talk About Race,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (August 14, 2014)

Faith

• “Protest and Spectacle in Lafayette Square,” Hedgehog Review Blog (June 18, 2020)

• “Breaking Out of the White Evangelical Echo Chamber,” Christianity Today (February 10, 2020)

• “Why I’m Still Confident About Confident Pluralism,” Christianity Today (August 13, 2018)

• “Christian Witness in an Anxious Age,” Christianity Today (June 20, 2016) (with Timothy Keller)

• “Confident Pluralism: A Response,” First Things (May 31, 2016) (Response to Carl Trueman)

• “America’s Dividing Line: Thoughts, Prayers, and Belief in a Transcendent God,” CNN (December 4, 2015)

• “The Incomprehensible Witness of Forgiveness,” Hedgehog Review Blog (June 25, 2015)

• “Pluralism Doesn’t Mean Relativism,” Christianity Today (April 6, 2015)

• “5 Guidelines for Living in a Pluralist Society,” Christianity Today (October 10, 2014)

book Reviews

• “You Only Have 3,429 Weeks,” The Gospel Coalition (August 30, 2021) (reviewing Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2021))

• “Engaging Jesus and John Wayne,” Hedgehog Review Blog (February 24, 2021) (reviewing Kristin Kobez Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright, 2020))

• “Preserving Religious Freedoms in a Pluralistic Society,” Marginalia (November 6, 2020) (reviewing Robert Louis Wilken, Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom (Yale University Press, 2019))

• “Searching for Solidarity—and Starting with Facts,” The Gospel Coalition (November 2, 2020) (reviewing Jonathan Sacks, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (Basic Books, 2020))

• “How a Book on Doubt Changed My Life,” The Gospel Coalition (August 12, 2019) (reviewing Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Eerdmans, 1995))

• “Higher Education Must Address Free Speech and Social Justice,” The Gospel Coalition (December 12, 2018) (reviewing Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Penguin, 2018))

• “Please Join Me in Expressing Displeasure With the Draft,” Comment (February 16, 2017) (reviewing Keith J. Bybee, How Civility Works (Stanford University Press, 2016))

• “Contesting Religious Liberty,” Hedgehog Review (Fall 2016) (reviewing The Rise of Corporate Religious Liberty, Micah Schwartzman, Chad Flanders, and Zoe Robinson, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2016))

• “We Need (Religious Freedom) Reinforcements,” The Gospel Coalition (August 26, 2016) (reviewing Mary Eberstadt, It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies (Harper, 2016))

• “Institutions in Context,” 50 Tul. L. Rev. 491 (2015) (reviewing Paul Horwitz, First Amendment Institutions (Harvard University Press, 2013))